Over the past four years, the West Coast-based Academy of Country Music has chosen to award its special awards recipients and non-televised category winners in a separate and relaxed Nashville ceremony, rather than during the ACM’s tightly scripted spring awards show in Las Vegas.

Monday’s fourth annual ACM Honors found the star-packed Ryman Auditorium filled with heartened award-winners and with well-wishers who seemed to appreciate the chance to pay appropriate homage, rather than to merely clap during quickie camera time.Continue reading →

Born George Richardson on Nov. 30 1935 in Promise Land, Ark., Mr. Richey co-wrote classic country songs that were recorded by artists including Wynette and George Jones. He aided in the creation of Wynette’s “‘Til I Can Make It On My Own” and Jones’ “(A Picture of Me) Without You” and “The Grand Tour,” and he produced material for Wynette, Merle Haggard, Johnny Horton, Wanda Jackson and others.

In a 2009 interview with www.tunesmith.net, Mr. Richey said, “Music was my life here on earth. It is what got me through the journey. It paved the way down so many roads that were restricted for most. . . . I was eaten up with it. I lived it, breathed it and worshiped it.”Continue reading →

“It is an honor to be asked again by the Academy of Country Music to be a part of the awards honoring the people who make our business work on such a core level," Womack said in a statement. “For the artists, the songwriters, the people who bring this music to the fans, these awards recognize the exceptional contributions of the people who create the foundation for everything we do -- and any time you can recognize that kind of contribution, it is a wonderful thing to be a part of.”

Cut from the stage of the Ryman Auditorium and inserted into the Grand Ole Opry House stage as a nod to tradition and history, the six-foot circle of oak was submerged in two feet of water during the flood of 2010. The rest of the waterlogged Opry stage will likely be trashed. But the circle, where Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Roy Acuff, Patsy Cline and other greats stood and sang, is irreplaceable.

“It is in remarkably good condition,” said Grand Ole Opry Group president Steve Buchanan. “We will ultimately need to replace the stage, but we do that every few years. But the circle will be saved, and it will be center stage when we open back up.”

Buchanan declined to specify other individual Opry House items that made it through last weekend’s storms. He and others are still searching through the rubble, which is, after all, better than wading through the rubble. The water is gone now from the auditorium and from the backstage area, though noxious filth remains. It should take three to four weeks to clean the mud off, after which the process of assessing and repairing damage will begin.

“The destruction is on a grand scale,” Buchanan said. “And this is a building we have a loving and emotional attachment to. There’ve been moments of significant emotion every day. It’s hard for everyone here, because they care so much. The people that work here consider this to be a very special place. We will not feel a sense of relief until we have completed this entire process, until we have gone through and hopefully been able to restore or rebuild.”Continue reading →

The ACM Awards will be held Sunday, April 18 in Las Vegas, and broadcast live that night at 7 p.m. on CBS. The group of winners announced Tuesday will be celebrated in a separate event to be held in Nashville on Tuesday, Sept. 21.

Urban won the Jim Reeves International Award for aiding country music's acceptance throughout the world. Schlitz and Walker were selected as winners of the Poets Award, given for lifetime achievement in songwriting.

Robbins and Tillis received the Cliffie Stone Pioneer Award, which honors pioneering figures in country music. Essig wins the Mae Boren Axton Award, given for years of service to country music. And Crazy Heart was announced as the winner of the Tex Ritter Award, given to a country music-related movie that receives major exposure.

When people talk about classic country songwriters, they often speak of Harlan Howard, Cindy Walker, Jerry Chesnutt and Dallas Frazier.

But Gordon Lightfoot — best known in America for FM radio hits such as “Sundown” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” and best known in his native Canada as the nation’s “folk laureate” — has numerous, three-minute claims to classic-country-songwriter status.

“The first time someone from Nashville cut a song of mine was Marty Robbins, with ‘Ribbon of Darkness,’” said Lightfoot, 71. “He sped it up and did a wonderful job, and I still use his arrangement to this day. After Marty, I got to meet quite a few Nashville guys, and I made a couple of albums down there. George Hamilton IV had one of the best cuts, on ‘Early Morning Rain.’ I came down and did Johnny Cash’s television show, and got to meet Kris Kristofferson and Mickey Newbury and Waylon Jennings and a lot of others.”

Lightfoot was a driven, voracious writer who put out 13 albums in his career’s first 10 years, between 1966 and 1976. In the new century, he has been slowed by a near-fatal abdominal hemorrhage, though not by the recent Internet rumors of his death. Greatly exaggerated, those.Continue reading →